Voiculetiu Oana Elena

American Studies, III

Strange as this Weather Has Been

Ann Pancake

Ann Pancake's debut novel, Strange as This Weather Has Been, is a work of fiction

that weaves parts of Pancake's own Appalachian childhood into the story of a modern-day

coal mining family. This character-driven novel was published in 2007, with the sound of a

ticking clock Pancake's characters are pushed into the tumult of West Virginia, into one of

the most dangerous parts of the country, where strip mining has wreaked havoc on the

environment. The ecosystem was damaged as a result of the destruction of the landscape.

The story centers on Lace See and her daughter, Bantella, and tells the family's fight

to survive in the West Virginia hollows from many perspectives. The story is told from the

perspectives of four characters: Lace, Bant, Corey, and Dane, three of her four children. Lace

and Bant, two land lovers, relate their stories in the first person. The third-person perspectives

of Corey and Dane, who do not share the same commitment, are told.

Lace opens the tale by reflecting on why she was drawn to her now-husband Jimmy

Make and how she became pregnant. Lace is constantly torn between staying and leaving her

hometown, despite her youthful desire to do so. Pancake spends many of the novel's pages

delving into this contradiction of the relationship between person and environment. Lace and

her family battle to keep their individuality in a world where disaster is unavoidable.

Lace and Jimmy's dysfunctional marriage, as well as the disastrous floods caused by

strip mining on neighboring mountains, are the two key conflicts in the narrative. While Lace

and Jimmy's marriage has numerous problems, the flooding is their biggest source of discord.

Lace wants to take on coal corporations and demand that they use safer mining methods.
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American Studies, III

Jimmy, on the other hand, wants to relocate his family out of West Virginia because he

believes the coal firms are far too powerful and influential to be swayed. While Lace and

Jimmy's marriage is in jeopardy, their disagreements also serve as a metaphor for West

Virginia's strip mining industry.

Pancake is from a West Virginia mining town, and her inspiration for Lace, Jimmy,

and their children came from real-life interviews she conducted while researching the novel.

The novel is both a compelling examination of the human condition in the face of natural

calamity and a rallying cry against irresponsible mountaintop removal strip mining. Pancake

makes her argument by demonstrating firsthand the impact MTR causes to a town, such as

obliterating the skyline and causing irreversible damage to the ecosystem. While Strange as

This Weather Has Been does not directly address the subject, it does give a vivid image of

how strip mining affects the people who live there.

Lace is one of the novel's primary characters. She never felt at home in West Virginia

as a child, and she fantasized of leaving to travel the world. However, she became pregnant at

the age of 18, dropped out of college to marry her 15-year-old boyfriend Jimmy, and has

since felt as if her goals had been dashed. She becomes an activist many years later,

denouncing the mining company's destruction of the countryside. At this way, she

rediscovers her identity in the same area she avoided. Even when offered the opportunity to

leave the mountain and live in Raleigh, Lace refuses to depart the area she feels obligated to

safeguard.

Lace and Jimmy's 15-year-old daughter is Bant. Bant's best recollections of her

grandmother, Lace's mother, date back to when she was a small child. Lace's mother took

care of Bant while Lace was depressed about never leaving West Virginia, dropping out of

college, and having a daughter. Lace's mother taught Bant about the land, showed her how to
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American Studies, III

survive off plants in the woods, and instilled in her the belief that the forests are sacred. Bant

gets a lot of her personality from her grandmother, especially her love of the woods.

Lace's husband, Jimmy Make, is the father of Bant, Dane, Corey, and Tommy.

Despite the fact that he is a major character in the story, none of the chapters are written from

his point of view. Rather, his life is told through the perspective of his children and Lace.

Lace is always pointing out how Jimmy has never matured. He is stuck between adolescence

and adulthood as a teen father. Jimmy tries to avoid the responsibilities that his family has

placed on him. Jimmy didn't spend much time at home after they married, preferring to work

long hours, drink with his pals, and dismiss Lace's concerns about their relationship.

Dane is the second oldest child in the family. He recognizes that he is different from

the other children in the household at the age of twelve. Although Dane and his family are

aware of his differences, the book never explicitly labels them. He is physically weak, with

stumpy limbs and large thighs, and he isn't a quick mind, unlike his siblings. He also has a

more emotional response than they do. Dane feels these omens suggest he will die soon after

mentally integrating environmental degradation with his employer Mrs. Taylor's End Times

preaching and the church's End Times preaching. He feels nauseous every day just thinking

about it, but he never tells anyone about it because he isn't a big talker. Instead, he pays

attention, internalizes what he hears by taking it to heart, and then uses ritualistic behavior to

deal with his worry.

Corey is the third oldest child, and he is Jimmy's twin brother. Corey is fascinated by

mechanical stuff such as autos, four-wheelers, and mining equipment; his primary ambitions

are to ride his neighbor's four-wheeler and eventually build his own. Corey, unlike Bant and

Lace, who see the mining company's demise as a disaster, is enthralled by it all. He enjoys

scavenging in flooded rivers for pieces of metal that have washed up, and he thinks the floods
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American Studies, III

are amusing. Even when Bant shows Corey the broken mountain up close and personal, all

Corey can think about is how cool the mining equipment is and how much he wants to ride

his bike through the lumpy dirt. After sneaking a ride on his neighbor's four-wheeler and

crashing it, Corey sadly dies. Corey's death symbolizes the unavoidable consequences of

mining companies' land degradation. Jimmy's death, on the other hand, acts as a subtle

motivation for him to eventually take leadership of his family.

Lace has a relative named Mogey. One of the chapters is written from his point of

view, and he tells how the woods have become an extension of himself. He finds more

spirituality in the woods than in church, however he nevertheless goes to church on a regular

basis to avoid appearing pagan. Everyone who knows him describes him as a lovely soul, and

he credits his tenderness to his connection to nature. The destruction of his land, mountains,

and house has devastated him, but he, like many others in the area, feels powerless to stop it.

Mrs. Taylor's son, Avery, also known as Bucky, is the old woman who hires Dane to

help her around the house. From his point of view, one of the novel's chapters is written.

Much of his chapter is dedicated to recounting his survival of the terrible Buffalo Creek

flood, which is a recent illustration of the devastation that mining can cause. Unlike the other

characters, Avery is no longer a resident of West Virginia. He left for college and never

returned. He, like many of the other characters, still considers the area his home;

nevertheless, because he no longer lives there, he feels like an alien when he returns.

There are a lot of meaningfull themes in this book. One of the most important, I think,

is the connection between identity and place. A major theme is the relationship between

identity and location. Lace had a hard time identifying herself with her environment when she

was younger. Lace was raised in Yellowroot hollow by a mother who adored the lush forests

and hills, but she never viewed herself as one of them. Instead, she turned to periodicals and
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American Studies, III

movies for inspiration, and she related to what she saw. She began to perceive West Virginia

as a prison that separated her from who she was genuinely intended to be since she didn't see

anyone in the media who looked like the West Virginians she knew.

Other characters who discover their identity in the alpine terrain include Mogey, Bant,

and Avery. The woods are an extension of Mogey's body, and he sees himself as an extension

of the woods as well. In Chapter 11, Bant expresses a similar sentiment: "I never saw

myself, never felt myself, as separate from …" Because there is no distinction between

nature and people, Mogey fears that the destruction of the land is tantamount to murder.

Avery sees this connection as well, believing that the clearance of the woods and mountains

will precipitate the end of the world.

Another important theme presented in the book is the loss in rural mining

communities. The work spends a lot of time talking about loss, including loss of the land, loss

of self, and loss of relationships. While each loss works independently, they are all deeply

intertwined. The most evident and conspicuous is the loss of land. Mining firms are

destroying enormous swaths of forest and mountain, resulting in flooding that washes away

people's houses and yards. For Lace, Mogey, and Mrs. Taylor, the loss of the physical place

they connect with is inextricably linked to the emotion of losing a piece of oneself. This is

because, as discussed above, each of these personalities derives their identity from their

surroundings.

While the most obvious and related losses are those of location and self, loss of

relationships is just as common and is a direct outcome of the landscape. Lace and Jimmy's

romance is under peril throughout the story. While their initial attraction and children kept

them together for the majority of their childhood, their differing viewpoints on mining and its

environmental consequences tore them apart. Lace feels compelled to choose between
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American Studies, III

fighting for her home and fighting for Jimmy, and she opts for the former. However, it is

evident that she will lose everything in the end. When Jimmy moves away with Dane and

Tommy, she loses her husband; she loses her family when her son Corey dies; and she will

inevitably lose her farm as Yellowroot is destroyed by the mining business.

There are also a lot of symbols and motifs in this book, and the first one that I found

very interesting are the personified mountains. Mountains are characterized as having human

features throughout the novel because the people who live near them see them as alive and

capable of feeling loss and death. Bant compares the mountainside to a mutilated human

body in Chapter 2, describing it as "naked and scalped" and essentially "dead." The use of

gory, violent images, together with anatomical terminology like "head," "body," and "guts,"

makes the case that the mountains are being killed, not just mined for coal. “I knew from

Lace and Mogey that after they blasted the top off the mountain to get the coal, they had no

place to put the mountain’s body except dump it in the head of the hollow. So there it

loomed. Pure mountain guts”.

Now I am going to talk about another significant symbol, namely ‘the monkey’. The

monkey, a dead animal stranded in the creek, is emblematic of the death that looms over

Yellowroot as more and more land is destroyed. The monkey first appears in Chapter 3 as an

unidentified animal carcass with ‘“blond curly knots of drowned hair on the twisted body and

part of the creepy face. Corey has no idea, really, what this thing is. He knows it can’t be a

monkey, yet that seems the best thing to call it”. When the characters see or think about the

monkey, they are overcome with terror, which they deal with in a variety of ways. Even

though Corey is terrified of the monkey, he can’t help the staring. It’s like you can’t get your

eyes to adjust, the thing won’t come into focus, but, no, not like the focus of your eyes, but

your mind, your mind can’t focus it”. He has no idea what the monkey is, and like the

destruction that surrounds him, Corey is drawn in by both the dread and the animal.
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American Studies, III

The last symbol that I found in this book it’s about the weather. The idea that the

weather has been "strange" lately is a recurring theme in the story. Bant notes that people

often begin their statements with phrases like " “Strange as this weather has been" or "With

this crazy weather we've been having," and she understands that ‘’ Lace believed the weather

was linked to the rest of this mess. Many of the characters comment on how the weather is

unseasonably warm, cool, or overly clear-skyed, and the weather patterns become

emblematic of how coal mining is fundamentally affecting the environment. Not only is the

physical environment changing—yards are being washed away, animals are dying, and

mountaintops are being cleared, but the weather is also changing.

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American Studies, III

References

Strange as this Weather Has Been- Ann Pancake

Chapter 1,2,3,4…… 36.

Quotes from pages; 16,20,29, 100, 101..